Bitume destroyed: Ragusa industrial heritage site demolished with site-specific artworks

The Ancione plant in Ragusa, Sicily, a historic industrial archaeology site dating from the second half of the 19th century, has been demolished along with Bitume, a site-specific public art project involving dozens of artists. Curator Vincenzo Cascone condemns the destruction as an act of institutional blindness and cultural backwardness, noting that the community had opposed the demolition. The plant, which produced asphalt rock used to pave early roads in world capitals, was acquired by a developer lacking sensitivity. Cascone highlights that the municipality and superintendency failed to apply cultural heritage codes to regulate the demolition. Part of the site (2,000 sqm out of 148,000 sqm) will be preserved, but Cascone argues this cannot restore the full production cycle. He sees Bitume as having fulfilled its purpose of drawing attention to the site's value, and emphasizes that the project's archive, including a forthcoming documentary funded by the Libero Consorzio Comunale di Ragusa, will survive. Cascone references philosopher Paul Ricoeur on memory and forgetting, and notes that similar demolitions have occurred in Ragusa, including a historic dairy, a mill, and murals from the FestiWall festival. He calls the destruction a symptom of an economy driven solely by profit, contrasting with European guidelines promoting reuse of industrial spaces.